Cornyn Rips Holder Over Gun Control 'Bracelets'

17 Apr 2014

Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies about how to make guns safer. He proposed “making guns safer” by using “fingerprint identification,” or “having the gun talk to a bracelet that you might wear.” U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) took exception to this and sent a letter to the AG requesting more information about these ideas.

Senator Cornyn told Breitbart Texas that such proposals must be stopped before advancing any further.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find someone more determined to undermine the Second Amendment and the entire state of Texas, for that matter, than Attorney General Eric Holder. We need to get to the bottom of his most recent troubling comments and put an immediate stop to any scheme to require fingerprint identification and bracelets for law-abiding gun owners,” Sen. Cornyn said.

In the letter, obtained by Breitbart Texas, Sen. Cornyn states, “Your testimony has raised serious concerns for my constituents given President Obama’s track-record of acting beyond the scope of his legal authority and your hostility to the individual right to self-defense under the Second Amendment.”

He asks the AG a series of clarifying questions related to Holder’s ideas:

Is the Obama Administration currently exploring the possibility of an Executive Order requiring all firearms to possess the technological capabilities you referenced in your testimony?

Does the Executive Branch possess the statutory authority to take any executive action or agency action requiring firearms to possess the technological capabilities you referenced in your testimony? If so, under what provision of law does such authority exist?

Would the technological capabilities you referenced in your testimony require, or allow for, the monitoring of American citizens ‘ personally identifying information through a central database or registry?

How much, on a per firearms basis, would the technological capabilities you referenced in your testimony cost? Would it be appropriate to require law-abiding Americans to bear the cost of such technologies as a condition of exercising their fundamental constitutional rights under the Second Amendment?

Will you assure my constituents and me that, under your supervision, the Department of Justice will not issue regulations requiring law-a biding citizens to equip their firearms with fingerprint reading technology, or to link them to biometric bracelets?

Breitbart News’ Tony Lee reported on former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s response to Holder’s ideas. Palin says she currently wears three identifying bracelets, “One honors our military,” she explained. “One honors independent Americans who have a healthy distrust of Washington’s permanent political class and who will fight against elitists hell-bent on fundamentally transforming the USA. And one celebrates the year 1791 – that glorious year our Bill of rights came to be.”

“Eric, you can replace my identifying bracelets with your government marker when you pry them off my cold, dead wrists,” Palin concluded.